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Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Nutrition Debate #149: Feral Cat Feeding Frenzy

We have had a small colony of feral cats for 5 years. When
four adolescent siblings appeared on our rear terrace one day, we fed them.
What happened next was predictable. They returned every morning and evening for
“two squares.” We tried to do what we considered was the responsible thing, but
we were only able to trap, neuter and release three of them to the “wild.” They
were truly feral and were too old to be domesticated. But in the spring the 4th,
-just our luck - was obviously pregnant, and one fine day in April she
delivered her litter. We found her nest and at 4 weeks separated six adorable
kittens, domesticated them, and found them homes. But “Mommy” continued to
elude us and reproduce. She also soon introduced another feral, who we think
was her mother, to our banquet, and she too was fertile.

To make a long story short (and get to the point), we
finally, after four years, have caught and neutered (spayed or altered) all the
fertile ferals in our colony and the population has stabilized at seven adults.
We feed them at least twice a day and have become quite attached to all of
them, even though we still can’t touch or even get close to any of them.

And every year, when the weather turns cold as winter
approaches in our temperate climate (upstate New York), I’ve observed that our
small feral cat colony knows it’s time to fatten up for the long winter siege.
Their appetites seem insatiable, by any measure greater than usual. Ordinarily
cats know not to overeat. If they are “full,” they leave food on the “plate.”
But their appetites definitely change when they sense they will need fat
reserves to survive a long winter. Gary Taubes describes this mammalian
behavior in “Good Calories – Bad Calories” (pg. 294). It’s an example, he says,
of hormonal control of feeding behavior, just as growth hormones account for
the appetites of children. Children don’t get fatter (on a “proper” diet); they
get plump briefly and then get taller very quickly. And when cold weather is
coming, cats eat voraciously to fatten up for winter.

The temporary fat provides insulation from the cold as well
as body fat reserves. Of course, these cats don’t “know” why they have
rapacious appetites as the days get shorter and colder. Their unconscious
brains function autonomically regulating homeostasis on a daily and seasonal
basis. Their hormones “tell” them to eat. It prepares them to live off body fat
during the time when they will be unable to hunt or are less likely to be
successful at hunting. It’s a survival behavior. When spring comes, and the fat
reserves that enabled them to survive are depleted, their eating behavior will
return to “normal.” They will need to be lean again to have the agility to
hunt. “Fat cats” don’t get the “early bird.”

What can we learn from these observations? Well, we’re
mammals too, and it’s only been 500 generations or so (10,000 years) since we
learned to grow food as crops and then harvest and store them for winter. This
was at the beginning of the Neolithic Age. The time before that is referred to
as the Paleolithic Era, hence what is known today as Paleo dieting. But in
today’s world, we (most of us, especially those who will be reading this) live
in an environment of abundance in the food supply. Our modern lifestyle allows
us to shop at the local super market rather than “hunt and gather” or grow our
own food supply. The market is filled with a cornucopia of foods all year long,
many of them “processed,” which means they have already been “partially digested”!
White flour milled from whole grain is a perfect example, as are fruit juices
and smoothies. Even fruits, which are primarily sucrose, fructose and glucose –
all simple sugars, with a little fiber and pectin, have all been hybridized to
make them even sweeter (and larger) than they ever were in ancestral
times.

The result: When processed carbs dominate our diet, we eat
every day like winter is about to descend on us at any minute. The same
autonomic control system that tells the feral cat to prepare for winter, tells
us to “overeat.” Not the same mechanism, but the same effect because there is
no seasonal change. Spring never comes on this way of eating. We never get any
leaner. We’re always hungry for “sugar” (glucose from carbohydrates). It’s
never ending – a perpetual continuum.

The alternative is the way we were designed to eat. It takes
both an understanding of what drives our eating behaviors and the wish to
emulate that Way of Eating. Our bodies were designed to eat after a period of
mild ketosis following a meal. It is a natural state. Food wasn’t always
abundant. The cycle then was: feed, then fast, repeated maybe once or twice a
day. If you do this in combination with eating very few carbohydrates,
you will find you can do it without hunger. And if you need to lose
weight, you can further restrict your protein calories (to a point), and do
that as well, also without hunger.

Our feral cat colony ate twenty times more (by weight) for
breakfast today than we did. It was a veritable feeding frenzy. But their
feeding frenzy is being driven by the onset of winter. Our society is being
driven by an over dependence on boxed, bagged, and “predigested” processed
foods that we have come to overly rely on “for our convenience.” It is also
with the blessing and encouragement of our government whose misguided advice is
still being driven by 50 years of bad science, among other things.The “corrupt bargain” of government funding,
well-meaning but overreaching “big government” “fat cats” who want to tell us what
we should eat, and the forces of “big agribusiness” (and “big pharma”) that
profit from it. As individuals in society we need to learn to think for
ourselves, to recognize what is really
in our best interest. We need to learn what actions can lead to health, and then
act.

3 comments:

Hi! I met you at the farmer's market yesterday and said I'd come take a look at your blog. As promised, I'm looking around. In return, I'd like to ask you to think a little about your response to me when you first met me. Despite the fact that you spoke to me in front of a pastured beef and pork farmer's booth, you automatically assumed that I was overweight because I eat too many carbohydrates and was oblivious to their effect on my health. In fact, I was there to arrange to purchase bones for broth and organ meats because I am WELL aware of their importance in my diet. It doesn't hurt to ask if I'm looking for information, rather than assuming I don't know anything.

Good point, Sandra. I deserved that 'dress down' for what I assumed and what I said to you. I apologize. I'm also glad to know that you know about good nutrition. Very few do.

I've never made bone broth, but I 'know' how good it is, and would be for me. I love organ meats and wasn't aware that Sophie sold them. I do buy my both veal and lamb kidneys from venders at that market, and I have noticed that Adams Fairacre Farms also sells many 'cuts' of offal that I have never seen in any other local market. In Florida this year I bought and slow cooked lamb's tails in lots of fresh rosemary. Yummm.

I'm reading this as I sip my cup of tea, then I'll go out and feed my "outside" cats, which are all feral. Our SPCA neuters and gives them their shots for only $15 and I only just caught the last female after she'd raised her batch of babies. She abandoned one of them and I had to bottle raise the rascal. My old house cat has a weight problem, I think originally caused by grain-based food, she has never been a big eater. For the past year I've been feeding her a low carb diet. She has lost a little weight, but more important, she's able to move better and seems healthier.

About Me

I was diagnosed a Type 2 diabetic in 1986. I started a Very Low Carb diet (Atkins Induction) in 2002 to lose weight. I didn’t realize at the time that it would put my diabetes in clinical remission, or that I would be able to give up almost all of my oral diabetes meds. I also didn’t understand that, as I lost weight and continued to eat Very Low Carb, my blood lipids would dramatically improve (doubling my HDL and cutting my triglycerides by 2/3rds) and that my blood pressure would drop from 130/90 to 110/70 on the same meds.
Over the years I changed from Atkins to the Bernstein Diet (designed for diabetics) and, altogether lost 170 pounds. I later regained some and then lost some. As long as I eat Very Low Carb, I am not hungry and I have lots of energy. And I no longer have any of the indications of Metabolic Syndrome.
My goal, as long as I have excess body fat, is to remain continuously in a ketogenic state, both for blood glucose regulation and continued weight loss. I expect that this regimen will continue to provide the benefits of reduced systemic inflammation, improved blood lipids and lower blood pressure as well.